Please Tell Me I Did the Right Thing... I Feel Sick!

You did the right thing, no doubt about it.
Good for you :)
It would have caused you trouble WHEN (not if) it was discovered as plagiarism.

You did the right thing. He has to know that what he is doing is wrong by this point in his life. He should have been corrected sooner.

you know what's funny? when women are put in awkward situations like this WE feel guilty when someone else is out of line. I don't know, i just think that is strange. This guy is "cheating" in a doctorate program and you feel bad? back up. he should be kicked out of the program for cheating just once. you'd think by this time in his education he'd be beyond these things. don't feel bad. he's the knucklehead and he should pay the consequences. cheat once at this level of education, you're all done.

Yes of course you did. You should just forward the work that was provided to you to the professor. The professor can make his/her own determination of the quality of the work.

This is why I HATE group projects like this. I always seem to get stuck with most of the work and responsibility. Good luck.

You did the right thing. This is a doctoral program, not elementary school. If he's unable to create his own unique work product, he's not doing doctoral level work. That's his own problem, not yours of course, but if his actions were going to cause you extra work, or put your reputation on the line, then you acted appropriately.

PS. I hate group projects too. So much trouble!

I think you absolutely did the right thing. You had to cover yourself - you never know what he would have said if confronted and if he would try to somehow blame you. You don't want to risk messing anything up - like you said this is a doctorate program, not a junior college.

I agree with everyone else! You did the right thing 100%. His cheating would have impacted everyone's grade on this, not just his. He deserves to be "ratted out". If he gets in trouble, that's his problem. He did the crime, and like you said, it was obviously done intentionally.

You absolutely did the right thing.

I was just watching some news piece on plagarism, and from what I saw, I think teachers routinely use software to check for this. They are able to compare work to see if it matches previously published documents. So I would imagine any online school would know how to catch this even if you didn't sat anything.

You absolutely did the right thing. This guy wants a doctorate and he expects to cheat his way through??? Uh uh.

You did the right thing.

Plagiarism is illegal. If this is a group effort, you all are responsible if any one of you cheats. Look at your school's "honor code" -- I'm sure it has one -- and I bet you'll find that plagiarism is grounds for discipline and possibly expulsion from the program. If your professor does not act on this, the professor is a wimp and is abetting a plagiarist.

To back yourself up I would print out the sections of Internet sites and the textbook that he plagiarized and have his original text as well, to show the sources from which he stole. I also would get other study group members, who know he is a plagiarist, to back me up. This could end up with your having to testify in front of someone (see committees, below....) and you should be aware of that possibility, especially if he's a smooth customer who will deny he did it.

This is a doctoral program. Your careers depend on doing it well and doing it honorably -- and not getting kicked out. If it had been me I would not only have reported him to the prof but also to the "honor committee" or "ethics committee" that most schools have.

Do not feel bad that he will get in trouble. Do not waste that much energy on him. He's a cheat and a thief.

If you didn't rat him out, the prof would likely find out. There are software programs teachers can run material through to look for plagiarized material, if they don't know by looking at it. Do not feel bad for reporting cheating behavior that would affect your group's effort.

I got a low grade on a project for undergrad and after the presentation where my friend and I felt that the rest of the people had basically done no work and thrown our project under the bus, I spoke to the professor. She didn't give us As (and admitted that on our own terms we might have gotten one) but she did take our notes into consideration and bumped us a letter grade. If you don't speak up, nothing changes.

Do not let his reaction bully you.

Yes, you did the right thing. If it involves your paper, which it did, you would fail the course if you turned in something plagiarized.

Oh, I hate people that do that, especially when it is in a group. No reason that your grade should have to suffer due to his laziness. Absolutely, you did the right thing.

You did the right thing.

I am however a little offended by your second to last sentence. Most "junior" colleges have the same exacting standards as 4 year universities. They just happen to save you about 30 grand in tuition. I've attended two junior/community colleges and I can tell you this, plagiarism IS NOT TOLERATED on any level. It can get you kicked out of the class AND the school.

Heck it's not even tolerated in HIGH school.

Edited to add: My 18 (almost 19) year old son just added that it's not even allowed in middle school and they started with him about not plagiarizing in elementary. I know I knew about plagiarism LONG before I graduated from high school. And I'm old.

I know you have a lot of reponses so far, but I also wanted to comment. You were correct in what you did, and I'm glad you turned him in.

I do take issue with the comment "on the other hand this isn't junior college'. I have two community collge degrees, both with 2nd year writing classes. Plagarisim was taken very seriously at both colleges (and talked about ALL the time) and I knew of students at both places who failed classes for doing just what your classmate did. They were caught becauas the professor ran the papers through sites online. Please do not assume that just because it's a "junior college" that we don't take it seriously.

Whether it's elementary school or graduate school, stealing others' works, ideas and passing them off as your own is wrong. He already knows the rules for proper citation of sources. There is no excuse.

You are in a doctoral program, which means that someday, you and your fellow graduates will likely be holding positions with some level of authority over others (students, employees....even clients, perhaps) and will be in positions to make important decisions that could impact the lives of others. Do you really want someone who cheats to be such a position? Do you want someone like this representing your school, your field?

If the guy won't do what is necessary to EARN the degree, he doesn't deserve the degree and certainly doesn't belong in any professional position.

Get over the "rat" thing. This isn't the Soprano's. It's real life, and if you had covered for him, you would have been aiding him in his misconduct. Had you kept quiet, you might also have been held equally responsible since it was a group project. Reputable academic programs have no tolerance for plagiarism.

If you need me to say it, then, YES, you did the right thing. Now, stop worrying and let him deal with the consequences of HIS behavior.

J. F.

Yes, you did the right thing!!! Don't worry about a thing--He is a big boy and needs to be accountable for his actions. Good job!

M

Their is no need for you to feel sick, he should though. It's ridiculous for him to even think he could do something like that. Shame on him! You did the right thing..

I don't think you can ever go wrong for speaking the truth. What he is doing is cheating, plain and simple. It doesn't help him in the long run and it could have negatively impacted your work and grade for withholding that information. Your intuition told you it was wrong and you needed to come clean for your own conscience. That is called integrity. Hang onto it. It's very valuable in everything you do! :-)
HTH,
A.

You gave him an out! 100% right choice dont beat yourself up for being honest :)

I have no tolerance for academic dishonesty. You did the right thing telling the prof. and he should get punished. I would be mad if he didn't. So what if he thinks you "ratted" him out. Personal accountability. At this level, you should be working as colleagues, critiquing each others work not covering some liar's butt. Good job, mama!

You did the right thing! You shouldn't feel sick, you should feel relieved. Ugh, I can't stand a liar and a person that has no merit. Good for you for saying something. If he gets mad about it, that's his business. I hope he's not getting a doctorate in something that has to with morality or scruples!

You did the right thing, but surely, in a doctoral program, they put everything through turnitin? or something similar. Hopefully your teachers are not stupid enough not to notice blatant plagiarism.
But to get that far, by being a cheat, is just awful, the teacher won't give you away. You did good.

You did the right thing. This could have been something that could have jeopardized YOUR career if you had not been aware of this.
Good for you!

You did the right thing. His work affects your work. It's important to take a stand for honesty as well as to protect your own work.

Please don't rescue him. Just point out to the professor that you know the material and have recognized his copying.

I would leave it up to the professor to work it out. You have brought it to the professors attention so I would let the other student hand himself.

I would then refuse to work with this student. If the professor does not allow you to do this and puts you together again then contact the schools offices of administration.

The professor may not care either. If he does nothing then you have your answer.

You did the right thing.

Even if he "cites" his work, taking entire paragraphs from textbooks and websites is plain and simple plagerism in the legal sense. I'd get a copy of the MLA or the AP Stylebook and show him the rules of proper citation. Sadly, there are many people out there who never learn how to write a paper, let alone what constitutes plagerism. While he may be a cheat, chances are greater that he has coasted through his entire education doing this simply because he doesn't know how to properly write a research paper and simply doesn't know any better. It's amazing how many people today (even in graduate programs) do not know how to research and write a paper and do things like this and worse yet, get away with it. Those programs used by schools to sniff out plagerism are no guarantees either.

And as for feeling sick...you should. If this piece should finally get published it will become a public document and in time,if for some reason the professor missed noticing the problem, someone else would realize entire paragraphs were lifted from other sources without citation and that could potentially hurt your credibility and your partner's credibility and worse yet, could bring on unwanted lawsuits from the people whose ideas were stolen.

Bottom line, you were right to bring it up. But I would say, you probably haven't done enough yet to head off the real trouble that could come from this. Don't worry about dude's feelings. You need to tell him that this is the sort of stuff that could wreck your whole doctorate and future.

If he needs convincing that this is bad practice, just google plagarism cases in both the academic and journalism world. It can get mighty ugly depending on who gets invovled. Sadly, there are tons of notable cases.

You absolutely did the right thing.

You did the right thing. I'm a University professor who teaches online occasionally. I would want to know.

That happened in a group project in my underground program. The rest of us confronted him. He was very remorseful and apologized. We are still friends 30 years later.
You did the right thing. Hopefully that guy will also take responsibility for what he did.

You did the right thing. I teach in an associate degree program and I run all papers turned in to me through plagiarism check programs. If it was that obvious, he would've been caught and you may have been taken down with him. I would be shocked that anyone in a doctoral program honestly didn't know the need to cite references, it sounds like he is lazy, thinks he's smarter than the professor, or is just not the brightest (not a good candidate for a doctorate). I would feel bad about ratting him out too, but you have to watch out for yourself! At least it's online, and you don't have to go sit next to him in class...

You absolutely did the right thing imo . . . good grief, plagiarism at that level? He should definitely know better.

He would not get away with that - eventually his professor would have noticed and if it were that obvious it would not take very long. So, you did nothing wrong. Hopefully the professor talks to him about this and sets this guy straight so that he does not do it again. He will not be taken seriously otherwise and yes, others in your field WILL notice! He probably is very unsure about his own writing and wants to impress people. What he needs to learn is properly citing things does impress people and does make for good writing. It's not your problem though.

In a doctorate program?! Hell yeah you did the right thing! Shameful - he should know better!!

Congratulations. You just defined integrity -- and you have it!

Good luck on your program. :)

It's a Phd program not freshman year. I don't know why he doesn't know how to write a better paper and cite his sources. You did the right thing. You gave him a chance to change his work first. Group work is hard that way when one person is not doing good work.

Yes. Besides all the ethical reasons it needed to be cited, you recognized the work was taken from other sources including the textbook. Surely your professor would have recognized the same thing and disciplined your entire group accordingly. You definitely did the right thing.

You did the right thing. It was either that or "go down with the ship" when the plagiarism is discovered.

You did right--this is why I hate online courses.

You know, that's probably how he got by in his earlier programs. You did the right thing. And one day he'll realize it.

Yes, you did the right thing! I'm also in an online doctoral program and this exact thing happened to me. I also gave them the chance to give me more citations or quotes and got nothing back but an "it's cited correctly!". I actually dug in and corrected everything (in ONE long day!). Guess what, this student was Pissed! at me, for daring to touch and edit her "writing"!

I can still get upset about it and this was about a year ago. I wish now that I would have at least "outed" her to the rest of the group. Some of them knew, but a couple took her side and made my job iin getting this paper done really difficult.

I think you did. I mean, what else were you going to do. If you recognized that he straight copied the text, the professor will also and your grade will suffer. Like you said, this is not junior college and he needs to step up to the plate or get off the field!

Good luck with your paper!

um yeah you did the RIGHT thing. Does your school/professors not use some sort of plagiarism checker? I completed my BS online and we were to use the tool provided by the university to make sure things were cited properly and in our correct words. If the school did use a tool like that (even if it was only the professor) they would for sure find out. I probably had 1 person "caught" in each class.

You most definitely did the right thing, you did not mention your professor's response. I'm curious because the same thing happened to me, in my undergraduate, and the professor told me it was up to me to talk to my partner about it and that he'd be taking a real close look at our paper. He also mentioned that the reason for assigning team work was to build our skills the way we will work in collaborations in the real world, and problem solving was one of them. I felt alone and worse than starting in square one. I was forced to talk to my co-author about it. I told her I had come across her references and thought she had not quoted enough and if she would please go back and insert footnotes or re-word everything. It worked, but that experience woke me to speak up and still do; much to everyone's dislike. Good luck with your doctorate program.

You did not rat him out...you held him accountable for his actions. That is ridiculous that he would jeopardize his entire life of education but then again, that is most likely how he made it to this point...who knows. The way I see it, one of you was going to "appear" to have plagiarized at some point...or let's just say over the course of time you definitely deserve the credit of your efforts and solely the credit is yours. You did not rat him out even though you were most likely "heated" when you spoke up...you were shoved into a position when he did not take your "way out" as you politely offered up.

Your future is bright and your integrity in tact. Unless this is someone with whom you intended to continue a professional or personal relationship with (which it sounds like a huge "no") then you have nothing to worry about...time will move on and he may never learn his lesson. I do believe had you not said something, over time, it would have just irritated you more. Who knows, maybe you wouldn't have even thought of it, nevertheless what's done is done and had he been on the up and up, this would never have been an issue in the first place.

Go and enjoy your life :)

You did the right thing! This work is likely to be published some day and the very fact that he thinks he can get away with it at this level is disturbing.....

You did the right thing.